Climate change politics

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. I don't know how that's even debatable. The followup is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fix

You understand the second part did not erase the first right?

It doesn't erase it but its a reasonable position

To go back a few days, why do we even use the term "concern troll(ing)" if sincerity is irrelevant?

A common criticism of Republicans is that while they loudly purport to support border security, etc they are regularly caught employing/exploiting illegal immigrants.

If a politician was advocating for vaccination but refused it for themselves on "religious" grounds would that be problematic? Gore didn't even have that good an excuse

You're shifting the point again here. It's a lot more subtle, so at least we're getting somewhere, but it's still a slide.

In the border security example, the claim you're taking issue with is that they "purport to support border security". That is, the claim that they're making is about themselves and (since they're using those claims to gain political office) the actions that they're going to take. The reason criticizing them for employing and exploiting illegal immigrants is valid in that case is because it shows that they have a significant incentive not to take the actions they've said that they would, not that their actual claims about border security being a serious concern are invalid. Basically, the specific claims they make about border security are a separate concern from their claims that they should be put in a position of authority over the issue, and their exploitation of illegal immigrants is evidence against the latter and not the former.

As for the vaccination example... I can actually do you one better. Behold: the weedkiller incident. So, what do we make of this? How is this different from Al Gore declaring that climate change is a threat and then flying on a private jet? Well, there's a few things but I'll try to keep this short by highlighting the main one.

When someone like Gore promotes scientific claims on climate change and then flies on a private jet, that shows inconsistency. That inconsistency could mean that he doesn't take it as seriously as he claims, it could be that he's a hypocrite, it could be that he has some other concern, or it could just be that he hasn't thought through the impacts of his personal actions. It could even be that he fully believes it's a threat, but is a shitty person who just plain doesn't care. The inconsistency doesn't really tell us anything about whether or not his claims and arguments are valid, and the fact that he's expressing them against a background of scientific research and with sources means that we don't even need to care. Even if he is trying to lie, the claims and arguments he's providing are still generally true.

Patrick Moore's specific claim was that you could drink a whole quart of glyphosate and it wouldn't hurt you. He was offered some to drink. His response was "no, I'm not stupid". When pressed on it, he insisted that they change the subject or else end the interview. Now, here's the thing: if he had presented proper arguments with sources to back up his claim that it's safe to drink a quart of glyphosate, as Gore often does when making claims about the climate, the fact that he refused to drink it would be irrelevant. The problem is that he didn't provide any supporting argument at all. Essentially, he was expressing a personal belief about glyphosate (also supported by the fact that the statement right before that started with "I do not believe") rather than an argument, and his very next statement demonstrates that he doesn't actually hold that belief.

That is, he didn't just act inconsistently. We aren't just uncharitably dismissing every alternate possibility and assuming that he's lying. The way he acted cannot be reasonably interpreted as anything but lying, and someone demonstrably lying means that we should be dismissive of someone's claims if they do not back them up with argument or evidence. As I mentioned, that's exactly what Moore did so we can dismiss his claims and ignore basically everything he said in the interview.

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. I don't know how that's even debatable. The followup is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fix

You understand the second part did not erase the first right?

It doesn't erase it but its a reasonable position

To go back a few days, why do we even use the term "concern troll(ing)" if sincerity is irrelevant?

A common criticism of Republicans is that while they loudly purport to support border security, etc they are regularly caught employing/exploiting illegal immigrants.

If a politician was advocating for vaccination but refused it for themselves on "religious" grounds would that be problematic? Gore didn't even have that good an excuse

You've been around here long enough that it's simply impossible to believe that you honestly don't know what concern trolling is, that you're doing it and that it has absolutely no merit.

It's like arguing that not molesting boys isn't what we want out of leaders because some people who preached that molesting boys was sinful also molested boys.

I'd say it's embarassing to see you propping up such a bullshit argument except it isn't. It's what we've come to expect of you.

If my choice were between actual Marxist socialism and a "state of emergency" akin to World War 2 (e.g. the "System Change" people) and climate change, I'll take climate change. It's not worth sacrificing Democracy for and locking up people who dare to question the government's actions.

This is a really interesting reflection of your political beliefs. I'd contest that actual Marxism would probably solve the problem and many others quite quickly, because it gets rid of capitalism, which is after all the fundamental reason for this problem to be able to proliferate through a tragedy of the commons/externality mechanism.

Also, why would you need to sacrifice democracy, let alone capital-d Democracy? Generally, marxism advocates democracy much more than capitalism (where, generally speaking, oligarchies/corporatocracies reign, like in most of the West today).

Marxism advocates but is really really terrible at realizing democracy.

Ish.

Marxism (at least the original form, and at least as I understand it) advocates for democracy in that it sees it as a necessary means of achieving revolution without force, but Marxism actually pretty specifically requires the eventual abolishment of democracy entirely. Democracy exists to create laws and laws exist to coerce action by threat or use of force, and that kind of coercion is pretty necessarily ethically questionable at best. In the grand narrative of Marxism, the end goal is to abolish the state and all forms of class entirely, and to produce a utopian society in which this form of coercion is neither necessary nor desirable.

So... yeah. That's why you can't have capital-D Democracy under Marxism. Marxism does advocate for it as a means to an end, but doesn't support it as a persistent means of governance.

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

So lets get back to FlyAugustus's question. I'll rephrase it for clarity: "Did or did not Al Gore's hypocrisy influence people's opinion on climate change who might otherwise have believed it?"

I'm arguing yes it did. You are arguing the it *shouldn't* have. That's why I keep coming back and saying that in politics worrying about "should" in that fashion is just pissing into the wind

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

So lets get back to FlyAugustus's question. I'll rephrase it for clarity: "Did or did not Al Gore's hypocrisy influence people's opinion on climate change who might otherwise have believed it?"

I'm arguing yes it did. You are arguing the it *shouldn't* have. That's why I keep coming back and saying that in politics worrying about "should" in that fashion is just pissing into the wind

You've been around here long enough that it's simply impossible to believe that you honestly don't know what concern trolling is, that you're doing it and that it has absolutely no merit.

It's like arguing that not molesting boys isn't what we want out of leaders because some people who preached that molesting boys was sinful also molested boys.

I'd say it's embarassing to see you propping up such a bullshit argument except it isn't. It's what we've come to expect of you.

I know what it is

Code:

concern trollingNOUNinformal derogatorythe action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion.

The difference between Gore and a concern troll is (apparent) intent. The similarity was an apparent lack of sincerity and the outcome of derailing the discussion. For the purposes of climate change the outcome far outweighs the intent

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

So lets get back to FlyAugustus's question. I'll rephrase it for clarity: "Did or did not Al Gore's hypocrisy influence people's opinion on climate change who might otherwise have believed it?"

I'm arguing yes it did. You are arguing the it *shouldn't* have. That's why I keep coming back and saying that in politics worrying about "should" in that fashion is just pissing into the wind

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't have. I'm arguing against the claim that you explicitly made that it should have, and you're continuing to lie about having made that claim in the first place so that you can avoid acknowledging that and shift to a separate argument. You've also already demonstrated why you're doing so by trying to slip the original claim back in without addressing my original arguments against it.

So, hey, let me make this real easy for you: should people consider things like what jets Gore flies on or how much CO2 he produces when they assess his claims about climate change? More generally, should people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them? Is that rational?

These are very clear, unambiguous yes-or-no questions, and I expect clear, unambiguous yes-or-no answers. No more waffling or deflection or "that's not really what matters", please, and no more lies about not having said that - you've already wasted more than enough time trying to dodge this.

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

So lets get back to FlyAugustus's question. I'll rephrase it for clarity: "Did or did not Al Gore's hypocrisy influence people's opinion on climate change who might otherwise have believed it?"

I'm arguing yes it did. You are arguing the it *shouldn't* have. That's why I keep coming back and saying that in politics worrying about "should" in that fashion is just pissing into the wind

What are you basing that argument on?

In order to win elections you have to convince a voter on the issue by their terms of debate. If people are receptive to listening to your arguments you'll never convince them regardless of your merit

Obviously you can't reach everyone but no sense handing the people they prefer to listen to easy ammo. Gore himself, since the movie, has gone on to make efficiency improvements to his estate, purchase tax credits and apparently use commercial flights. If he'd taken those steps earlier his message would have been more effective

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't have. I'm arguing against the claim that you explicitly made that it should have, and you're continuing to lie about having made that claim in the first place so that you can avoid acknowledging that and shift to a separate argument. You've also already demonstrated why you're doing so by trying to slip the original claim back in without addressing my original arguments against it.

So, hey, let me make this real easy for you: should people consider things like what jets Gore flies on or how much CO2 he produces when they assess his claims about climate change? More generally, should people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them? Is that rational?

These are very clear, unambiguous yes-or-no questions, and I expect clear, unambiguous yes-or-no answers. No more waffling or deflection or "that's not really what matters", please, and no more lies about not having said that - you've already wasted more than enough time trying to dodge this.

You dont have to be so antagonistic about this.

Lets start with this one

Quote:

More generally, should people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them? Is that rational?

Why *wouldn't* you consider the likelihood that someone is lying to you before agreeing to what they want?

Gore himself, since the movie, has gone on to make efficiency improvements to his estate, purchase tax credits and apparently use commercial flights. If he'd taken those steps earlier his message would have been more effective

Nope. If Gore drove a prototype Tesla, lived in an unheated tent, and walked on water across the ocean to Europe to promote his movie, we would all be arguing about the CO2 impact of lithium mining and tent making and producing enough calories of food to walk 3000 miles on water instead. And about how the "climate change agenda" is all about making us all live in tents and walk everywhere. Which, to be clear, it's fucking not. But since the deniers think it is, and won't have their minds changed on that, there's no winning by living the life they think you should.

I asked you yes or no questions, and asked you to give yes or no answers. You answered neither of them, and shifted not only to a different question but to a different question that I have already addressed.

I am going to ask this one more time: is it rational for people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them, yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer.

Gore himself, since the movie, has gone on to make efficiency improvements to his estate, purchase tax credits and apparently use commercial flights. If he'd taken those steps earlier his message would have been more effective

Nope. If Gore drove a prototype Tesla, lived in an unheated tent, and walked on water across the ocean to Europe to promote his movie, we would all be arguing about the CO2 impact of lithium mining and tent making and producing enough calories of food to walk 3000 miles on water instead. And about how the "climate change agenda" is all about making us all live in tents and walk everywhere. Which, to be clear, it's fucking not. But since the deniers think it is, and won't have their minds changed on that, there's no winning by living the life they think you should.

Have you checked some of the threads here? The CO2 impact of lithium extraction, electric car production, and the electricity used to charge the cars are all valid concerns. They aren't reasons to stop making/using electric cars but its important to understand the externalities of any choice

Food choice isn't beyond question either. Go check out the vegan thread. There are a surprising amount of people here at least somewhat resistant to arguments that animal based diets are more harmful to the environment

Finally while Gore can't stop his opponents from attacking him he can (and apparently did) take steps to make them resort to absurd or exaggerated attacks that less people would believe

I asked you yes or no questions, and asked you to give yes or no answers. You answered neither of them, and shifted not only to a different question but to a different question that I have already addressed.

I am going to ask this one more time: is it rational for people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them, yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer.

I asked you yes or no questions, and asked you to give yes or no answers. You answered neither of them, and shifted not only to a different question but to a different question that I have already addressed.

I am going to ask this one more time: is it rational for people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them, yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer.

Yes

Good, we're getting somewhere.

Now, I've provided multiple arguments and explanations as to why that's not the case and why tu quoque is a fallacy, in response to the various analogies you've given. You've outright ignored all of them, and sidestepped into a discussion about whether or not Gore's actions did influence people. I want you to do one of two things now:

1) Admit that you can't address those arguments, rescind the claim, and don't bring it up again.

I asked you yes or no questions, and asked you to give yes or no answers. You answered neither of them, and shifted not only to a different question but to a different question that I have already addressed.

I am going to ask this one more time: is it rational for people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them, yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer.

Yes

Good, we're getting somewhere.

Now, I've provided multiple arguments and explanations as to why that's not the case and why tu quoque is a fallacy, in response to the various analogies you've given. You've outright ignored all of them, and sidestepped into a discussion about whether or not Gore's actions did influence people. I want you to do one of two things now:

1) Admit that you can't address those arguments, rescind the claim, and don't bring it up again.

2) Address those arguments without the sidestep.

It's up to you which one you want to go for.

You are trying to apply the rules of formal debate to politics. Yes, from a strict standpoint of logic the act of hypocrisy, in isolation, by a person doesn't necessarily disprove a claim of they are making. But that's discounting the importance of trust and emotional appeal in political discourse. Further I've not claimed that voters dont employ fallacious reasoning. Clearly many of them do

Now, lets go back to what I said in context

Quote:

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. I don't know how that's even debatable. The follow-up is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fix

Huh, its like I was acknowledging that people should go further to achieve intellectual honesty on an issue but often dont

Have you checked some of the threads here? The CO2 impact of lithium extraction, electric car production, and the electricity used to charge the cars are all valid concerns. They aren't reasons to stop making/using electric cars but its important to understand the externalities of any choice

Food choice isn't beyond question either. Go check out the vegan thread. There are a surprising amount of people here at least somewhat resistant to arguments that animal based diets are more harmful to the environment

Finally while Gore can't stop his opponents from attacking him he can (and apparently did) take steps to make them resort to absurd or exaggerated attacks that less people would believe

That's exactly my point. There's always going to be a "valid concern" about the environmental impact of living. If such "concerns" about the person making the argument that humanity needs to make adjustments to how we produce and use energy are fatal to the argument, then we're all hopelessly fucked and might as well just take up jet racing as a hobby to take our minds off the inevitable.

I asked you yes or no questions, and asked you to give yes or no answers. You answered neither of them, and shifted not only to a different question but to a different question that I have already addressed.

I am going to ask this one more time: is it rational for people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them, yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer.

Yes

Good, we're getting somewhere.

Now, I've provided multiple arguments and explanations as to why that's not the case and why tu quoque is a fallacy, in response to the various analogies you've given. You've outright ignored all of them, and sidestepped into a discussion about whether or not Gore's actions did influence people. I want you to do one of two things now:

1) Admit that you can't address those arguments, rescind the claim, and don't bring it up again.

2) Address those arguments without the sidestep.

It's up to you which one you want to go for.

You are trying to apply the rules of formal debate to politics. Yes, from a strict standpoint of logic the act of hypocrisy by a person doesn't disprove a claim of they are making. But that's discounting the importance of trust and emotional appeal in political discourse

Further I've not claimed that voters dont employ fallacious reasoning. Clearly many of them do

Now, lets go back to what I said in context

Quote:

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. I don't know how that's even debatable. The follow-up is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fix

Huh, its like I was acknowledging that people should go further to achieve intellectual honesty on an issue but often dont

Let me repeat:

Address those arguments without the sidestep.

I'm not applying the rules of formal debate to politics or discounting the importance of emotional appeal in political discourse. I'm not saying that you claimed anything about voters employing fallacious reasoning. I'm not saying that the things you said after making the claim were wrong. I've already explained all of these things to you repeatedly and explicitly, and you are lying about what I am arguing, what I am saying, and what claims I've attributed to you.

I'm trying to get you to either defend or explicitly drop a specific claim that you made, because you've demonstrated - both here and in other threads - that if I don't hold you to task here, you will repeat that claim as if the arguments against it were never made and we will be forced to repeat them, at which point you'll pull the exact same bullshit. I'm not going to tolerate that, so I'm going to stick to that specific claim - which you've now admitted explicitly that you did make and that I am accurately stating - until you either respond to the arguments I've made or admit that you can't back up what you said and agree not to make the claim again.

Do you really want to talk about whether Gore's actions did influence voters, whether or not Gore should have acted differently, or how the rules of logic do and don't apply to political discourse, or any of that? Cool. I'll be happy to oblige after you address or abandon the point that you have spent the last several pages dancing around, not before.

That's exactly my point. There's always going to be a "valid concern" about the environmental impact of living. If such "concerns" about the person making the argument that humanity needs to make adjustments to how we produce and use energy are fatal to the argument, then we're all hopelessly fucked and might as well just take up jet racing as a hobby to take our minds off the inevitable.

The more absurd and obviously contrived the "concerns" are the less fatal to the argument they become. That's the problem with the criticism of Gore - they had enough basis in reality to have merit to mainstream voters

The free market has had about 4 decades to come up with a solution, and so far, has only made the problem worse. I think it's a little past time to try something new.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. You actually need to create a market that prices in carbon for there to be a response to it. The US used to have a problem with acid rain, then instituted a cap & trade scheme for sulfur -- a resounding success: https://voxeu.org/article/lessons-clima ... -programme

Quote:

In a departure from conventional environmental regulation, the legislation did not prescribe how power plants would reduce their SO2 emissions. Instead, with a phase-in beginning in 1995 and culminating in 2000, the statute capped aggregate SO2 emissions at the nation’s 3,200 coal plants and created a market for firms to buy and sell government-issued allowances to emit SO2. By 2007, annual emissions had declined below the programme’s nine million ton goal (a 43% reduction from 1990 levels), despite electricity generation from coal-fired power plants increasing more than 26% from 1990-2007 (EPA 2012; EIA 2011). [...]

In 1989, before the programme went into force, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated the total cost of implementing the Acid Rain Program at $6.1 billion. Eight years into the programme, in 1998, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an industry organisation, and Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent think tank, estimated that total implementation costs would be between $1.1 billion and $1.7 billion (NAPAP 2005).

It's not that often that a problem ends up costing less than a third to fix than originally estimated.

What happened was pretty much what you'd predict: industry started developing scrubbers and other technology that massively reduced emissions at fairly low cost. That's the whole point of a market: you create incentives toward a particular goal (e.g. a cap on sulfur emissions), but let actors in the market figure out how to get there most efficiently. Particularly with carbon, approaches are going to differ massively by country and region.

You can pull a Bill de Blasio and rail after Manhattan skyscrapers... which is great politics. But in terms of carbon emission, living in a modern skyscraper vs. a 50 year old detached house in Queens, it's pretty intuitive what has greater opportunities for insulation improvement. (Although some recent work suggests the effect of insulating homes has been overestimated anyway. It's often not cost effective even when putting a high price on carbon, which you'd not realize or be able to respond to if this had been legislated into building codes.)

So you don't really mean free market, you mean regulated market? I can buy into that, but it's not what most people who want "market approaches" seem to want, especially on the more GOP related side.

I'm not applying the rules of formal debate to politics or discounting the importance of emotional appeal in political discourse. I'm not saying that you claimed anything about voters employing fallacious reasoning. I'm not saying that the things you said after making the claim were wrong. I've already explained all of these things to you repeatedly and explicitly, and you are lying about what I am arguing, what I am saying, and what claims I've attributed to you.

I'm trying to get you to either defend or explicitly drop a specific claim that you made, because you've demonstrated - both here and in other threads - that if I don't hold you to task here, you will repeat that claim as if the arguments against it were never made and we will be forced to repeat them, at which point you'll pull the exact same bullshit. I'm not going to tolerate that, so I'm going to stick to that specific claim - which you've now admitted explicitly that you did make and that I am accurately stating - until you either respond to the arguments I've made or admit that you can't back up what you said and agree not to make the claim again.

Do you really want to talk about whether Gore's actions did influence voters, whether or not Gore should have acted differently, or how the rules of logic do and don't apply to political discourse, or any of that? Cool. I'll be happy to oblige after you address or abandon the point that you have spent the last several pages dancing around, not before.

I've been trying do what you ask but you are just going to keep calling me a liar regardless apparently

Work with me here. In real life people make decisions on incomplete information/gut feelings etc

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. If someone is acting contrary to their stated position why is that? Perhaps they do not believe their stated position. Why would they not believe what they are saying? Maybe they are lying

Absolutely no fallacy up to this point. Life is fraught with people with ulterior motives and its naïve not to expect the possibility. Thus my argument "should"

Now here is the part of what I said you keep conveniently ignoringThe follow-up is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fixOnce you believe that someone is lying you should try to find proof of said deceit to inform your response. Many people wont bother especially if the conclusion fits their bias. This is where fallacious reasoning is introduced into the process if someone concludes they are being lied to without finding evidence of that lie. This is why I am arguing Gore "did" influence people even if he "should not have"

I'm not applying the rules of formal debate to politics or discounting the importance of emotional appeal in political discourse. I'm not saying that you claimed anything about voters employing fallacious reasoning. I'm not saying that the things you said after making the claim were wrong. I've already explained all of these things to you repeatedly and explicitly, and you are lying about what I am arguing, what I am saying, and what claims I've attributed to you.

I'm trying to get you to either defend or explicitly drop a specific claim that you made, because you've demonstrated - both here and in other threads - that if I don't hold you to task here, you will repeat that claim as if the arguments against it were never made and we will be forced to repeat them, at which point you'll pull the exact same bullshit. I'm not going to tolerate that, so I'm going to stick to that specific claim - which you've now admitted explicitly that you did make and that I am accurately stating - until you either respond to the arguments I've made or admit that you can't back up what you said and agree not to make the claim again.

Do you really want to talk about whether Gore's actions did influence voters, whether or not Gore should have acted differently, or how the rules of logic do and don't apply to political discourse, or any of that? Cool. I'll be happy to oblige after you address or abandon the point that you have spent the last several pages dancing around, not before.

I've been trying do what you ask but you are just going to keep calling me a liar regardless apparently

Work with me here. In real life people make decisions on incomplete information/gut feelings etc

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. If someone is acting contrary to their stated position why is that? Perhaps they do not believe their stated position. Why would they not believe what they are saying? Maybe they are lying

Absolutely no fallacy up to this point. Life is fraught with people with ulterior motives and its naïve not to expect the possibility. Thus my argument "should"

No, there isn't "absolutely no fallacy". I've explained exactly what the fallacy there is. I've explained why your argument that "maybe they are lying" does not work here, and done so in great detail. I've even cited the exact fallacy you're invoking repeatedly, by name. Once again, it's called "tu quoque" and it is absolutely fallacious.

Also, "I'm not answering you because you'll just call me a liar" is a ridiculous claim to make when the reason I'm calling you a liar is specifically because you're lying to avoid answering me. And note that I have provided you opportunities to prove the lies that you told, and even outright asked you to point to where I'd made arguments that you lied about me making, and you haven't done either. If you don't want to be called a liar, stop lying and start discussing this in good faith.

Quote:

Now here is the part of what I said you keep conveniently ignoringThe follow-up is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fixOnce you believe that someone is lying you should try to find proof of said deceit to inform your response. Many people wont bother especially if the conclusion fits their bias. This is where fallacious reasoning is introduced into the process if someone concludes they are being lied to without finding evidence of that lie. This is why I am arguing Gore "did" influence people even if he "should not have"

I'm not "conveniently" ignoring it. Nothing about this tedious bullshit that you're engaging in is convenient, and if I intended to just pretend you weren't making that argument then I wouldn't have explicitly stated that I am refusing to touch that argument until you support or reject the first one.

You are explicitly stating that a fallacy, one that's pretty universally accepted as fallacious, is not a fallacy. I have already explained to you, multiple times, why it is a fallacy and why "but they might be lying" is not a valid cover. You have refused, multiple times, to address those explanations.

Still, you seem to have some serious comprehension problems given that you've consistently failed to understand things that I explicitly tell you, so I'll try one more time: see that post up there at the top of the page, where I talk about border security and the like? See all the points I make in there? Address them. Tell me why the things that I said in that post by directly replying to specific claims or explanations that I gave in that post. Ignore how the public will receive it, because that's not what we're talking about. Ignore whether or not it's "good politics", because that's not what we're talking about. Don't go into another "but I also said this", because that's not what we're talking about. The specific claim I'm taking you to task for - the only claim I'm taking you to task for - is a claim that you made about how to rationally assess claims and arguments, and that is the only discussion I'm willing to entertain with you right now.

So you don't really mean free market, you mean regulated market? I can buy into that, but it's not what most people who want "market approaches" seem to want, especially on the more GOP related side.

I think this is just a war over unclear definitions: I can't imagine anyone advocating for a "free" market that is not subject to contracts, which are enforced by courts (i.e. the government). So we're just talking about the degree or the nature of regulation. Usually, when Republicans say "free market," what they really mean is "market-based." The former is just better politics (for their supporters), because it links markets with "freedom."

Broadly, you can think of a market approach as stipulating something like: total carbon emissions will be capped at X ton per year starting 2025 and decrease by X tons per year until hitting zero in 2050. If your industry and your activities cause carbon emissions, you need to have emission certificates that can be traded on a market. Go figure out how to do it. And a regulatory approach as something like: all new buildings need to be built to LEED Gold standard, new cars need at least 40 MPG in city driving (or a ban on non-electric cars), coal plants have to be shut down by 2030, subsidies for home renovations, etc. Even most Republicans are generally on board with the former -- the sulfur emissions trading scheme had wide bipartisan support.

Both involve the government, but the former takes advantage of market mechanisms and is hence much more flexible: once you can make money by reducing carbon emissions, a lot of businesses will suddenly be greatly motivated to do it. A first step would be just to actually deploy all the technology that exists already (scrubbers for factories and the like), but cost money: currently, there's just no financial incentive to do it, which is insane. (The regulatory approach would just mandate that those specific technologies be deployed; but you can't mandate technology that doesn't yet exist.) And a second step is developing new technologies that can then be sold (10-20 years later, since innovation isn't instantaneous) to others who will want to adopt them as emission certificates get more expensive over time (supply decreases).

You don't need to go full space communist to get all the benefits from marxism. Just set up alternative power structures and increase control of the means of production by workers, and suddenly you'll have a systematic change that disincentivizes tragedy of the commons-type problems like climate change. This is something countries can choose to do and be effective at.

As Eastern Europe struggles toward democracy, it must also grapple with a ravaged environment. Corrosive soot has fouled water and soil, and in blackened industrial cities the air is laced with heavy metals and chemicals. In a world ruled by production targets, there was no pressure to clean up.

In the bleakness of early spring, the drawn faces and grubby homes take on the grays and browns of the landscape. Acrid smoke from rows of chimneys darkens the streets. The lignite and brown coal that is used to fuel the homes and industrial plants of much of Eastern Europe is cheap and abundant. It is also high in sulfur and ash and intensely dirty.

For years, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe denied that the coal was a health hazard. Or that steel and chemical works, operating with few or no emission controls, could endanger the environment and human life.

So you don't really mean free market, you mean regulated market? I can buy into that, but it's not what most people who want "market approaches" seem to want, especially on the more GOP related side.

I think this is just a war over unclear definitions: I can't imagine anyone advocating for a "free" market that is not subject to contracts, which are enforced by courts (i.e. the government). So we're just talking about the degree or the nature of regulation. Usually, when Republicans say "free market," what they really mean is "market-based." The former is just better politics (for their supporters), because it links markets with "freedom."

Broadly, you can think of a market approach as stipulating something like: total carbon emissions will be capped at X ton per year starting 2025 and decrease by X tons per year until hitting zero in 2050. If your industry and your activities cause carbon emissions, you need to have emission certificates that can be traded on a market. Go figure out how to do it. And a regulatory approach as something like: all new buildings need to be built to LEED Gold standard, new cars need at least 40 MPG in city driving (or a ban on non-electric cars), coal plants have to be shut down by 2030, subsidies for home renovations, etc. Even most Republicans are generally on board with the former -- the sulfur emissions trading scheme had wide bipartisan support.

Both involve the government, but the former takes advantage of market mechanisms and is hence much more flexible: once you can make money by reducing carbon emissions, a lot of businesses will suddenly be greatly motivated to do it. A first step would be just to actually deploy all the technology that exists already (scrubbers for factories and the like), but cost money: currently, there's just no financial incentive to do it, which is insane. (The regulatory approach would just mandate that those specific technologies be deployed; but you can't mandate technology that doesn't yet exist.) And a second step is developing new technologies that can then be sold (10-20 years later, since innovation isn't instantaneous) to others who will want to adopt them as emission certificates get more expensive over time (supply decreases).

I think we're largely on the same page with the real crux of this, but it's important to remember. The GOP does not advocate that, they specifically want free-market, because it allows them to extract the maximum value from their shareholders. Look what's going on in the current admin. Pai is a great example, as is DeVos. They are very specifically trying to roll back the kind of regulation I think we both think are good things (as a general, we could quibble on specifics). This is not central to the previous discussion, but I think it's important to remembering what the import of some words is.

So here's the thing: if the people pointing at Gore flying on a private jet were doing so and saying "therefore he doesn't really care about the issue, so we shouldn't put him in charge of it"? I agree. Gore isn't and shouldn't be in charge of the issue. That's not what people argue, though. What they argue is that Gore flies on a private jet, and therefore doesn't believe that the issue exists, and therefore everything that he says can be dismissed out of hand? That right there? That's the fallacious bit.

So lets get back to FlyAugustus's question. I'll rephrase it for clarity: "Did or did not Al Gore's hypocrisy influence people's opinion on climate change who might otherwise have believed it?"

I'm arguing yes it did. You are arguing the it *shouldn't* have. That's why I keep coming back and saying that in politics worrying about "should" in that fashion is just pissing into the wind

And you're arguing that the people who pretend that Gore's "hypocrisy" convinced them to believe that Climate Change is a scam did so out of a sense of reason.

It's impossible to reason with people who just pretend to follow reason.

That leaves lying to them as a method to convince them. Which basically opens you up to the same issue you're pretending to want to solve.

So. How exactly do you want to go about convincing these people, and how much effort do you want to expend doing so? Or may it be better to just focus on working on another group of people?

No, there isn't "absolutely no fallacy". I've explained exactly what the fallacy there is. I've explained why your argument that "maybe they are lying" does not work here, and done so in great detail. I've even cited the exact fallacy you're invoking repeatedly, by name. Once again, it's called "tu quoque" and it is absolutely fallacious.

Yes you did. And I agree that it is a fallacy that voters are committing but not because they are considering Gore's hypocrisy but because they are drawing unsupported conclusions based on it

Quote:

"Tu quoque" or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

The fallacy is *concluding* that the other person was lying based on their hypocrisy without other evidence

However, merely inferring that they might be is notLets go back to one of your examples

Quote:

Patrick Moore's specific claim was that you could drink a whole quart of glyphosate and it wouldn't hurt you. He was offered some to drink. His response was "no, I'm not stupid". When pressed on it, he insisted that they change the subject or else end the interview. Now, here's the thing: if he had presented proper arguments with sources to back up his claim that it's safe to drink a quart of glyphosate ... the fact that he refused to drink it would be irrelevant.

Moore didn't have evidence so his refusal was absolutely relevant. In this case its safe to conclude Moore's hypocrisy is discrediting because it also agrees with evidence that glyphosate is dangerous *and* that Moore knows it. Which would certainly be relevant in a legal proceeding

In a perfectly reasonable world people would conclude that Gore is correct and ignore his hypocrisy but that's not the world we live in

Quote:

I'm not "conveniently" ignoring it. Nothing about this tedious bullshit that you're engaging in is convenient, and if I intended to just pretend you weren't making that argument then I wouldn't have explicitly stated that I am refusing to touch that argument until you support or reject the first one.

So I have to prove the baby is mine after you cut it in half? A lot of your criticism of the first statement is countered by the implications of the second. They were made at the same time

No, there isn't "absolutely no fallacy". I've explained exactly what the fallacy there is. I've explained why your argument that "maybe they are lying" does not work here, and done so in great detail. I've even cited the exact fallacy you're invoking repeatedly, by name. Once again, it's called "tu quoque" and it is absolutely fallacious.

Yes you did. And I agree that it is a fallacy that voters are committing but not because they are considering Gore's hypocrisy but because they are drawing unsupported conclusions based on it

Quote:

"Tu quoque" or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

The fallacy is *concluding* that the other person was lying based on their hypocrisy without other evidence

However, merely inferring that they might be is notLets go back to one of your examples

Quote:

Patrick Moore's specific claim was that you could drink a whole quart of glyphosate and it wouldn't hurt you. He was offered some to drink. His response was "no, I'm not stupid". When pressed on it, he insisted that they change the subject or else end the interview. Now, here's the thing: if he had presented proper arguments with sources to back up his claim that it's safe to drink a quart of glyphosate ... the fact that he refused to drink it would be irrelevant.

Moore didn't have evidence so his refusal was absolutely relevant. In this case its safe to conclude Moore's hypocrisy is discrediting because it also agrees with evidence that glyphosate is dangerous *and* that Moore knows it. Which would certainly be relevant in a legal proceeding

In a perfectly reasonable world people would conclude that Gore is correct and ignore his hypocrisy but that's not the world we live in

Two things before I stop replying to you entirely, because I'm tired of your bullshit at this point.

First, you don't understand what tu quoque is. It's not just appealing to hypocrisy as a means of reaching a conclusion. It's appealing to hypocrisy in general. The English term for it is literally "appeal to hypocrisy", not "jump to conclusion based on hypocrisy". A tu quoque argument will generally have the structure of "he doesn't believe this, therefore it's not true", but tu quoque reasoning - appeals to hypocrisy in general are still not rational.

Second, and more importantly, you just used an ellipsis to cut out a critical part of that quote, so uh... good job showing that you're not a liar, bud. Here's what I said with the bit you cut in bold:

"Patrick Moore's specific claim was that you could drink a whole quart of glyphosate and it wouldn't hurt you. He was offered some to drink. His response was "no, I'm not stupid". When pressed on it, he insisted that they change the subject or else end the interview. Now, here's the thing: if he had presented proper arguments with sources to back up his claim that it's safe to drink a quart of glyphosate, as Gore often does when making claims about the climate, the fact that he refused to drink it would be irrelevant."

Note that the rest of that paragraph, which you also admitted, goes on to elaborate about the difference, because literally the entire point of that example was to explain how Moore's actions in that case were different from Gore's apparent hypocrisy.

I have a pretty low tolerance for people cutting off the main arguments of a post like this (which you just did), but cutting out the middle of a sentence like this is gross. You should be fucking ashamed.

Note that the rest of that paragraph, which you also admitted, goes on to elaborate about the difference, because literally the entire point of that example was to explain how Moore's actions in that case were different from Gore's apparent hypocrisy.

I have a pretty low tolerance for people cutting off the main arguments of a post like this (which you just did), but cutting out the middle of a sentence like this is gross. You should be fucking ashamed.

Or maybe I was just trying to talk about that example in isolation so we could explore the nature of that example without worrying about Gore

Okay, no, I'm going to address this last thing because holy fuck this is unbelievable:

The point of the argument was to compare two things. You cut out the part that makes the comparison so that you could ignore it. You did not say "I want to address this in isolation, so let's forget the bit about Gore". You cut the bit about Gore completely and then responded as though it was never said. Worse, the rest of your response repeats arguments I made as if I didn't make them, but without the surrounding context and arguments that explain why they don't support what you're saying.

I've been on this site for a long while and I've seen a whole lot of bullshit, but in my entire time here I have never once seen anybody as flagrantly, unabashedly and unashamedly dishonest as you. The fact that someone with as much disregard for honesty as you could even function boggles the mind.

I'm done tolerating you. You've demonstrated unambiguously that you're a liar and you've demonstrated unambiguously that you don't care. Nobody is going to take you seriously after that, and there's no value in treating you as if they will.

More generally, should people consider the sincerity of someone's beliefs when that person is trying to persuade them? Is that rational?

Why *wouldn't* you consider the likelihood that someone is lying to you before agreeing to what they want?

This one, at least, is trivial, and rabbish had already answered it half a dozen times: because if the argument is sound whether the person who is arguing it believes it or not is quite irrelevant to its truth or falsehood. If you suspect that someone is lying, it may make sense to research their claims, but you should *always* do that, even when you don't suspect that the person is being insincere. But, frankly, even if they are actually lying, their claims *still* might be entirely true; after all, if someone is wrong, then they might describe reality only when they lie.

Gore himself, since the movie, has gone on to make efficiency improvements to his estate, purchase tax credits and apparently use commercial flights. If he'd taken those steps earlier his message would have been more effective

Nope. If Gore drove a prototype Tesla, lived in an unheated tent, and walked on water across the ocean to Europe to promote his movie, we would all be arguing about the CO2 impact of lithium mining and tent making and producing enough calories of food to walk 3000 miles on water instead. And about how the "climate change agenda" is all about making us all live in tents and walk everywhere. Which, to be clear, it's fucking not. But since the deniers think it is, and won't have their minds changed on that, there's no winning by living the life they think you should.

Have you checked some of the threads here? The CO2 impact of lithium extraction, electric car production, and the electricity used to charge the cars are all valid concerns. They aren't reasons to stop making/using electric cars but its important to understand the externalities of any choice

Food choice isn't beyond question either. Go check out the vegan thread. There are a surprising amount of people here at least somewhat resistant to arguments that animal based diets are more harmful to the environment

Finally while Gore can't stop his opponents from attacking him he can (and apparently did) take steps to make them resort to absurd or exaggerated attacks that less people would believe

And here we see the insincerity at the heart of your argument. To be very clear here: there is no way of living in the current modern world which does not produce many many valid environmental concerns. So long as fossil fuels are burnt for power *every* decision that we make will fail those standards. If you rebut one claim of it, perhaps you do decide that flying is indeed too emissive, there are still an infinity more such claims which those who want to burn every last drop will make. After all, they don't doubt Gore because he flys on jets, they doubt him because they want to burn every last drop. You don't beat motivated reasoning by saying "that's reasonable". That is a fight you are doomed to lose.

Moreover, there is very little that we can individually do to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Moving out to a powerless cabin in the woods doesn't really help. In fact, it is little better than burying one's head in the sand. After all, it doesn't convince anyone to shut down coal plants. But, a celebrity flying around on a private jet organizing and rallying the troops to shut down coal plants might actually have a net positive impact. After all, by organizing, said celebrity helps us put our feeble individual actions together, all weighing on the same cause, and together individual actions aren't individual, they are collective and powerful. And, if that collective action did enable even one coal plant to be shut down or canceled, then that more than accounts for the emissions of the private jet which helped it to happen, even if commercial flights may have been better, perhaps they didn't allow him to reach all the rallies he needed to preach at to achieve the feat.

Oh, and one further bit of evidence that this argument is entirely insincere and that Al Gore takes his emissions seriously: Al Gore lives or at least tries to live a carbon neutral life. He has even explained how he does so.

Work with me here. In real life people make decisions on incomplete information/gut feelings etc

True, and it encapsulates most of the problem, with "b", below.

Quote:

People should consider the sincerity of someone attempting to persuade them. If someone is acting contrary to their stated position why is that? Perhaps they do not believe their stated position. Why would they not believe what they are saying? Maybe they are lying

Given the limited ability for most people to make logical and reasonably rational decisions about themselves, let alone others, there's little reason to promote a broader application of the same poorly-wielded tool.

Quote:

Absolutely no fallacy up to this point.

At a minimum, it's question-begging, and the underlying assumptions are rather flawed, IMO.

Quote:

Life is fraught with people with ulterior motives and its naïve not to expect the possibility. Thus my argument "should"

People can have ulterior motives and tell a lie, or tell a truth. Ulterior motives are neither sufficient, nor necessary (they can be, but not inherently so), to verify the validity of an argument.

Quote:

Now here is the part of what I said you keep conveniently ignoringThe follow-up is that they should also look for corroborating evidence to make a final decision but that's a problem of human nature that's more difficult to fixOnce you believe that someone is lying you should try to find proof of said deceit to inform your response. Many people wont bother especially if the conclusion fits their bias. This is where fallacious reasoning is introduced into the process if someone concludes they are being lied to without finding evidence of that lie. This is why I am arguing Gore "did" influence people even if he "should not have"

The problem isn't that people shouldn't attempt to verify challenging information, it's how you're suggesting that it should be approached.

It should be done through a reasonable and knowledgeable examination of the facts, not by attempting to divine the motives, or attacking the personal behavior, of the presenter. Further, given that most of us are ignorant of cognitive and behavioral sciences and it's deep body of work, and none of us are psychic, that shouldn't include illusory beliefs about possessing the expertise to determine the facts of an argument, based on what we presume is in the presenter's mind.

The fact that you're still on about how Gore didn't do that is just proof that you, and all those people you're concerned were ignored, did actually ignore what Gore said.

Which means we're back to the idiocy of people arguing that Clinton failed to address the issues facing the prototypical blue-collar coal miner, when that's exactly what she did - those people just ignored what she said and focused on what they thought she meant.

There's nothing that that person can say to convince those people. Absolutely nothing.

The fact that you're still on about how Gore didn't do that is just proof that you, and all those people you're concerned were ignored, did actually ignore what Gore said.

Which means we're back to the idiocy of people arguing that Clinton failed to address the issues facing the prototypical blue-collar coal miner, when that's exactly what she did - those people just ignored what she said and focused on what they thought she meant.

There's nothing that that person can say to convince those people. Absolutely nothing.

There actually are things that work to convince (some of) those people. People tend to be swayed when they think that climate change is having a personal impact on them right now, which is why things like last summer's particularly high temperatures corresponded with an apparent uptick in belief that the problem is real. More generally, telling people that specific extreme weather events in their area are being caused by climate change could be an effective way to convince them to accept it, even when they normally take more hard-line contrarian views.

Thing is, that would cause way more problems than it would solve. There's the obvious issue of lying to people and the fact that the lie could backfire if we happened to have a period of particularly mild regional weather. The bigger issue is that we'd be reinforcing the exact pattern of thinking that's made trying to convince people in the first place such a massive problem. Given how many issues there are where this whole "gut feeling/I don't see it" thinking causes people to dismiss hard evidence, it's probably not a good thing to validate that behavior.

Broadly, you can think of a market approach as stipulating something like: total carbon emissions will be capped at X ton per year starting 2025 and decrease by X tons per year until hitting zero in 2050. If your industry and your activities cause carbon emissions, you need to have emission certificates that can be traded on a market. Go figure out how to do it. And a regulatory approach as something like: all new buildings need to be built to LEED Gold standard, new cars need at least 40 MPG in city driving (or a ban on non-electric cars), coal plants have to be shut down by 2030, subsidies for home renovations, etc. Even most Republicans are generally on board with the former -- the sulfur emissions trading scheme had wide bipartisan support.

Yet the outcome of both approaches is the same, by 2040 a zero carbon cap with an infinite price is indistinguishable from a ban. I'm not arguing against a price based approach, just questioning if it alone is sufficient. Do we need car crash safety standards or food standards or fire retardant standards or standards on the size of a nut and a bolt or the length of an TCP header or should we let the free market decide?

I'm pretty happy to simply tax petrol rather than ban sales of internal combustion engine cars. But fundamentally the government can ignore all tax because it pays it to itself, so we need regulation on better building standards for building social housing, schools, government buildings. We need regulation stopping government from using fossil fuels. We need regulation on privately rented houses, because our government subsidises rent but not fuel costs.

We also need government investment in infrastructure - the free market doesn't build cycle lanes or bus lanes.

Rationing solely by price means that a 1%er's steak or long haul flight or whatever is theirs to enjoy simply because they have outbid everyone else, so their need is satisfied. The fee and dividend model works as long as it is progressive, and today the rich emit more than the poor. But they are also best placed to rapidly move to a low carbon lifestyle - buying a brand new electric car, renovating a house with better insulation and heat pumps and solar panels, going on fewer but longer holidays. It works because average emissions are higher than median emissions, so a majority of people will be better off. What happens if that no longer holds true, and the poor use an increasing proportion of carbon because they cannot afford the capital investment to use less. Spending a fortune on cheap boots because being poor is expensive. Will fee and dividend keep popular support, or will we decide to loosen the cap? Once we are committed to 2 degrees of warming, 2.1, then 2.2 won't seem so bad. (Yes, this is a slippery slope argument, but not every slippery slope is fallacious simply because some are.)

As Eastern Europe struggles toward democracy, it must also grapple with a ravaged environment. Corrosive soot has fouled water and soil, and in blackened industrial cities the air is laced with heavy metals and chemicals. In a world ruled by production targets, there was no pressure to clean up.

Or alternatively authoritarianism is much worse than democracy. There is no pressure to clean up when you are shot for complaining, or when you are struggling to afford food and shelter. I would be incredibly surprised if there was any evidence to show that low regulation free market economies had better environmental outcomes than the higher tax social democracies of Europe.

…Broadly, you can think of a market approach as stipulating something like: total carbon emissions will be capped at X ton per year starting 2025 and decrease by X tons per year until hitting zero in 2050. If your industry and your activities cause carbon emissions, you need to have emission certificates that can be traded on a market. Go figure out how to do it. And a regulatory approach as something like: all new buildings need to be built to LEED Gold standard, new cars need at least 40 MPG in city driving (or a ban on non-electric cars), coal plants have to be shut down by 2030, subsidies for home renovations, etc. Even most Republicans are generally on board with the former -- the sulfur emissions trading scheme had wide bipartisan support. …

The bold is sadly counterfactual. You would expect conservatives to be on board with such a market based solution - and, indeed, this has consistently been the position of intellectual conservatism as typified by The Economist. Sadly, intellectual conservatism has absolutely no sway in modern politics. Conservative politicians (and, to a large extent, conservative-identifying voters) have made “we won't do anything significant about climate change” a core part of their identities, at least in the US and Australia.

Hell, when the conservatives won power in Australia in 2013 they dismantled an existing carbon trading scheme very much like the one you describe, and (because it's politically untenable to publicly state “we have no climate policy at all” in Australia) replaced it with a scheme whereby the government directly pays large businesses for specific projects to reduce their emissions.

There was a time where conservatives proposed policies that were in line with considered, intellectual conservatism. They may do so again in the future. For the moment, they're not, and attempting to solve problems by proposing solutions fully in line with their intellectual values will continue to be met with absolute opposition.

You've been around here long enough that it's simply impossible to believe that you honestly don't know what concern trolling is, that you're doing it and that it has absolutely no merit.

It's like arguing that not molesting boys isn't what we want out of leaders because some people who preached that molesting boys was sinful also molested boys.

I'd say it's embarassing to see you propping up such a bullshit argument except it isn't. It's what we've come to expect of you.

I know what it is

Code:

concern trollingNOUNinformal derogatorythe action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion.

The difference between Gore and a concern troll is (apparent) intent. The similarity was an apparent lack of sincerity and the outcome of derailing the discussion. For the purposes of climate change the outcome far outweighs the intent

Food choice isn't beyond question either. Go check out the vegan thread. There are a surprising amount of people here at least somewhat resistant to arguments that animal based diets are more harmful to the environment

No one in that thread believes animal based diets are not more harmful to the environment, there are various objections to the morality of not eating meat because of the animal itself and it's rights but universally the thread understands and acknowledges that meat farming is more damaging to the environment.

The fact that you're still on about how Gore didn't do that is just proof that you, and all those people you're concerned were ignored, did actually ignore what Gore said.

Which means we're back to the idiocy of people arguing that Clinton failed to address the issues facing the prototypical blue-collar coal miner, when that's exactly what she did - those people just ignored what she said and focused on what they thought she meant.

There's nothing that that person can say to convince those people. Absolutely nothing.

There actually are things that work to convince (some of) those people. People tend to be swayed when they think that climate change is having a personal impact on them right now, which is why things like last summer's particularly high temperatures corresponded with an apparent uptick in belief that the problem is real. More generally, telling people that specific extreme weather events in their area are being caused by climate change could be an effective way to convince them to accept it, even when they normally take more hard-line contrarian views.

Thing is, that would cause way more problems than it would solve. There's the obvious issue of lying to people and the fact that the lie could backfire if we happened to have a period of particularly mild regional weather. The bigger issue is that we'd be reinforcing the exact pattern of thinking that's made trying to convince people in the first place such a massive problem. Given how many issues there are where this whole "gut feeling/I don't see it" thinking causes people to dismiss hard evidence, it's probably not a good thing to validate that behavior.

That's exactly my point: the only thing that works on these people is lying to them, simply because they've shown that they believe feel-good lies over uncomfortable facts. At that point, just abandon all pretense of a liberal democracy and move straight to the Russian or Chinese model of governance.

You've been around here long enough that it's simply impossible to believe that you honestly don't know what concern trolling is, that you're doing it and that it has absolutely no merit.

It's like arguing that not molesting boys isn't what we want out of leaders because some people who preached that molesting boys was sinful also molested boys.

I'd say it's embarassing to see you propping up such a bullshit argument except it isn't. It's what we've come to expect of you.

I know what it is

Code:

concern trollingNOUNinformal derogatorythe action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion.

The difference between Gore and a concern troll is (apparent) intent. The similarity was an apparent lack of sincerity and the outcome of derailing the discussion. For the purposes of climate change the outcome far outweighs the intent